No One is Perfect
by MoneButterfly
Summary: "When Meredith opens the door she sees Amelia sitting on the side of the bathtub. She is just about to apologize and walk out again, but then she notices the line of blood dripping down the inside of Amelia's left thigh." Wearing: self-harm.


No One is Perfect

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Summary: "When Meredith opens the door she sees Amelia sitting on the side of the bathtub. She is just about to apologize and walk out again, but then she notices the line of blood dripping down the inside of Amelia's left thigh." Wearing: self-harm.

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 _AN - This takes place just after episode 12x05 ends (I started writing this before episode 12x08 aired)._

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Owen lies next to her in the dark bedroom. His arm is wrapped around her and she lets her fingers run over the back of his hand. Amelia has always known that she isn't perfect, but he has always seemed to be. He always knows what to do and what to say. Everything about him always seemed to be just perfect. But he isn't perfect. Just like she isn't. They aren't perfect and so what?

The thought makes her smile and for a moment Amelia is almost happy. But then she remembers why she was sad to begin with. Perfect Penny killed her brother. That was what Meredith had called her. Perfect Penny. No one is perfect, but right now Penny is the least perfect person of them all. Amelia hates her. Not because she wants to, but because every fiber in her body tells her that it's Penny's fault that Derek is dead. Amelia knows that it's unreasonable. She knows that she doesn't know the whole story about that happened that night. Meredith hasn't told her much and Amelia just wanted to know. She hadn't meant to attack Penny with all of her questions. She had just wanted to know.

Owen's arm tightens around her upper body and all of a sudden Amelia feels like she is being suffocated. She lifts his arm off of her and crawls away from him. For a moment she sits on the side of the bed, but the feeling won't go away, so Amelia gets up and tiptoes out of the bedroom and down the hall. When she reaches the bathroom she slowly opens the door so she won't wake Maggie. Because if she did then Maggie would come out and notice that something was wrong and then she would want her to speak about her feels and Amelia really isn't in the mood for that right now.

If she accidentally woke up Meredith then she would probably just yell at her for being loud. And Amelia really isn't in the mood for that either.

Amelia closes the bathroom door and sits down on the on the side of the bathtub with her head in her hands. The suffocating feeling is still there. She tries to breathe in deeply, but it just makes her chest hurts. Amelia straightens her back and rises her arms over her head as she tries to take small breathes, but not so small that she might start hyperventilating.

If this had been her first panic attack then she might have been frighten by what was happening to her, but Amelia had suffered from them a lot when she was a child. They had started after her father had been killed.

But why was she having one now? She had talked with Owen and they were good. Better than good, actually. And not so perfect Penny was out of her house and she would never have to see her again. At least not until Monday... Amelia could feel tears running down her cheeks.

"Stop it!" she whispers to herself. "Stop it!"

Amelia wipes the tears away angrily, but the crying has just made breathing even more difficult. She wraps her arms around herself and hopes it will make her calm down, but it doesn't. Amelia continues to sob and she knows if she doesn't stop soon then someone might hear her. Meredith might hear her and Amelia doesn't want that, because her sister-in-law already hates her enough as it is.

So the crying and panicking has to stop and Amelia only knows one way to do that. She reaches across the bathtub and grabs the razor that lies between the shampoo and yellow rubber duck.

Meredith sits on the floor of her bedroom with her back against the door. She looks at the tequila bottle on her dresser. She wants to empty the whole thing. She wants to drink until she forgets everything. But she can't. If she does then she will probably still be drunk in the morning or at least have a really bad hangover, and she can't show up at the nanny's house like that. Meredith won't do that to her kids.

Meredith sighs as she rises from the floor and walks over to the dresser. She looks at the tequila bottle for a moment and then grabs it by the neck and walks quietly out of her room. Meredith plans to go downstairs and put the bottle away, but then she notices that the light is on in the bathroom. She looks back and forth between Amelia and Maggie's bedroom doors, but both are closed and no light shines out from under them.

So who is in the bathroom?

Meredith walks up to the door and lays her ear against it. She can't hear any movements or sounds, so she stands up straight and turns the knob, thinking that one of her sisters has simply forgotten to turn off the light when they had lifted the bathroom. When Meredith opens the door she sees Amelia sitting on the side of the bathtub. She is just about to apologize and walk out again, but then she notices the line of blood dripping down the inside of Amelia's left thigh.

Amelia drops the razor on the floor and looks shocked up at Meredith. "It's not what it looks like," she says, her voice shaking. "I wasn't... I... I'm sorry."

Amelia looks away as Meredith walks fully into the bathroom. She closes the door and locks it and then she puts the tequila bottle down by the sink and grabs the washcloth next to it. Meredith wets the cloth with cold water and then holds it out for Amelia to take.

"Here," she says, but Amelia stays quiet and keeps looking away. "Do you want me to do it?"

More quiet.

Meredith sighs and kneels down in front of her sister. Blood is still running down her thigh from the three vertical cuts, but they aren't too deep, so they won't have to go to the hospital to get them stitched. 'Thank goodness,' Meredith thinks, because she doesn't know how she would explain what happened without having to tell the truth.

Meredith lays the wet cloth on Amelia's thigh and presses it against the cuts. She tries to be gentle, but Amelia lets out a quiet moan and moves her leg away from Meredith's hand. "I know it hurts," she says, "but I have to stop the bleeding."

Amelia nods and wipes a tear off her cheek. "I know, I'm sorry."

"Good," Meredith says and holds the cloth against Amelia's thigh again as she awkwardly stands up and sits down next to her sister on the bathtub. She sits on the side that Amelia has head turned toward, so that they are now looking at each other. "You know we have to talk about this, right?"

"There's nothing to talk about," Amelia says and looks down at the floor.

"Amy, I'm sitting with my hand pressed against cuts on your thigh that you have made yourself. We NEED to talk about this!"

"Why?" Amelia asks and looks Meredith in the eyes. "What are you even still doing in here? I thought you wanted to kill me for falling apart."

"I..." Meredith says nothing more than that. She doesn't know what to say. She had forgotten that she was mad at Amelia. "I didn't mean it like that."

"It sounded like you did."

"I was just mad."

"You were mad at me."

"Yes, I was mad at you for being sad. I was mad at Penny for being in our house and at Derek for dying, but that doesn't mean that we don't have to talk about this," Meredith says and lifts the cloth from Amelia's thigh. They both look at the three angry red cuts. "What happened?"

Amelia sighs. "I felt like I was being suffocated. I couldn't breathe and I couldn't stop crying. I knew it was just a panic attack, but I couldn't make it go away."

"But why did you hurt yourself? Why didn't you wake someone?"

"Because I didn't want to talk about it, I just wanted the feeling to go away and I knew that cutting myself would do that."

Meredith doesn't know if she wants the answer, but she asks anyway, "So you have done this before?"

Amelia nods slowly and then she moves her hands down to her pajamas shorts and pulls them further up her thighs. Meredith follows her movements with her eyes and as the shorts are pulled back small white scars are revealed. She lets her fingers run slowly over Amelia's legs as she gently touches the scars.

"These are old," Meredith says and looks up at Amelia.

"Yeah, I haven't done this in many years."

"You should have come to me."

"No, you were mad at me, so it would only have made it worse."

"It doesn't matter. When you feel like this then you shouldn't be alone."

"You don't even like me."

"I don't have to, because we are sisters, so I love you."

"We are not sisters, we are sisters-in-law," Amelia says, but Meredith's words still makes her smile.

"No, your sisters are my sisters-in-law," Meredith says as she takes Amelia's hand in her own. "You live in my house and help me with my children. They call you Auntie Amy, so that makes you my sister."

"And sometimes sisters fight and they might even hate each other?"

Meredith used to hate Lexie. Not in the same way that she now dislikes or gets annoyed by Amelia. No, she used to really hate Lexie. Meredith hated that she existed, that she was sweet and smiley, that she got a nice and caring mother, that she got to be normal, that she wasn't dark and twisty and so on, but then somehow Meredith stopped hating her. She didn't know what changed. Lexie was still way too smiley, but suddenly it didn't annoy her so much anymore. Maybe it was because she got to know her sister. Because she came to love all the small annoying things that made Lexie the person that she was. So maybe she can learn to not dislike Amelia as well. Maybe they can really be sisters one day.

"Exactly, and we need to figure out how we can work through this," Meredith says as she squeezes Amelia's hand.

Amelia nods and stands up. "I would like that, but right now I think I need some sleep."

Meredith lets go of her hand and watches as Amelia looks through the medicine cabinet. She finds a pack of band aids and takes a big one out. She puts the pack back in the cabinet and then pushes up her pajamas shorts and places the band aid on the three cuts. "Do they still hurt?" she asks, pointing at Amelia's thigh.

"No, not really," Amelia says and then she opens the bathroom door. "Goodnight." And with that she disappears out into the dark hallway.

"Um…" Meredith stands up quickly and walks out the door to follow Amelia. "Amy?"

She stops and looks at Meredith over her shoulder. "Yeah?"

"I know Owen is still here, but do you want to sleep in my room tonight?" Amelia smiles and nods her head slowly. "Okay." Meredith walks up to her and takes her hand in her own. They walk quietly back to Meredith's room and without a word they both get into bed.

When Amelia wakes up the next morning she is confused. This isn't her room; it's Meredith's. What is she doing here? For a moment she doesn't know, but then she lets her hands slid down her legs and a sharp pain runs through her left thigh and suddenly she remembers: the panic attack, the cutting, Meredith finding her, their talk. Some part of her wishes that she didn't remember any of it or even that it had never happened. She would rather have Meredith still hating her than having her see what she had done to herself. But maybe it's good that Meredith knows. Maybe she will actually have someone to help her the next time things gets this bad, even if it's because of something that is going on between them.

Amelia rolls over in the bed and finds that Meredith is still sleeping next to her. She looks over her shoulder at the alarm clock and sees that it's only 7:43am and she is just about to lay back down again when she hears notices coming for down stairs. Who is that? Meredith is here and Amelia can't imagine Maggie being up this early on her day off, so who's in the kitchen?

Owen!

Amelia almost jumps out of the bed when she realizes that she has forgotten her boyfriend – or whatever he is. Last night had been such a mess. The dinner had gone horribly, she had cried, Meredith had yelled and Owen had made it all better and then she had gone and left him alone in her room all night. She doesn't think that he is mad about it, but she still feels bad, so she quickly tip toes out of Meredith's room and down the stairs to the kitchen.

Owen is standing by the stove, so Amelia can't see what he is doing, but she can smell it. He is making pancakes. She wants to just watch him work for a moment, so she keeps quiet, but he must have heard her come down the stairs, because without even turning around he asks, "Did you sleep well?"

Amelia sighs relieved; there is no angry visible in his voice. It makes her want to tell him about the newly cut wounds on her thigh, but when she opens her mouth to say it then she realizes that she isn't ready yet. She is not ready to share another imperfect this side of herself with him, but she knows that she can thrust him, so maybe it won't take long for her to be ready. The thought makes her smile and Amelia says, "How did you know it was me?"

"I just did," he says as he turns around and looks at her with a smile. "So, did you sleep well in Meredith's bed?"

Amelia smiles again and tilts her head to the side a little. "How did you know that I slept there?"

"When I woke and noticed that you weren't in the bed with me then I went looking for you. And I have to say that I was quite surprised to find you in her room, seeing as the last time I saw you two together then she was yelling some not very nice things at you," Owen says as he walks around the stove and over to her. He cups her face with both of his hands and smiles. "Did you make up?"

Amelia shrugs her shoulders and smiles as she stands up on her toes, so she can press her lips against his in a gentle kiss. She doesn't know if they have made up. She is still mad at Meredith for not telling her about Penny and Meredith is probably still mad at her as well. But none of it matters anymore, because they are sisters and no one is perfect.


End file.
